This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event June 14, 2006: Oaxacan Police Crack Down On Protesting Teachers. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.

Alabama police attack civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside of Selma, Alabama. [Source: Library of Congress]Over 500 non-violent civil rights marchers are attacked by law enforcement officers during a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The attack takes place while the marchers are crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside of Selma. The march is to protest the disenfranchisement of African-American voters, and to protest the fatal police shooting of civil rights activist Jimmy Lee Jackson. The marchers are badly beaten by police officers and white residents wielding billy clubs and tear gas, and driven back into Selma. The marchers heed the non-violent teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, and refuse to counterattack. The attack, later termed “Bloody Sunday,” is shown on national television, sparking a national outcry. Two days later, King will lead a symbolic march to the bridge, and he and other civil rights leaders will secure court protection for a third, large-scale march from Selma to Montgomery. A week later, President Lyndon Johnson will denounce the attack as “deadly wrong.” On March 21, King will lead some 3,200 marchers from Selma to Montgomery, reaching the capitol on March 25. By the time they reach Montgomery, the number of marchers will have grown to around 25,000. The attack helps spur the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA—see August 6, 1965). [National Park Service, 2001; American Civil Liberties Union, 2012]

Patsy Spier, an American teacher wounded in the attack. Her husband Rick Spier was killed. [Source: US Department of Justice]A group of US teachers traveling in the Indonesian province of Papua (also known as Irian Jaya) are ambushed on a jungle road. Two American teachers and one Indonesian teacher are killed, and eight American teachers are injured. The ambush takes place on a road owned by the company Freeport-McMoRan, which owns an extremely lucrative gold and copper mine nearby. The road is tightly controlled by the Indonesian military, the TNI, and a military check point is only 500 yards away. The TNI quickly blames the killings on the Free Papua Movement (OPM), a separatist group in the province. But a preliminary Indonesian police investigation finds that “there is a strong possibility” the ambush was carried out by members of the Indonesian military. Other classified reports presented to Congress by the CIA and FBI suggest the TNI was behind the ambush. [Washington Post, 6/22/2003] The weeks later, a US intelligence report suggests that senior Indonesian military officials discussed an operation against Freeport shortly before the ambush (see Mid-September 2002). [Washington Post, 11/3/2002] Matthew P. Daley, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, later says: “The preponderance of evidence indicates to us that members of the Indonesian army were responsible for the murders in Papua. The question of what level and for what motive did these murders take place is of deep interest to the United States.” At the time, over 2,000 security personnel were guarding the Freeport mine, and this has been a lucrative business for the TNI. However, Freeport had made recent comments in the local media that they were planning on cutting the security forces. The Washington Post will report in 2003 that the FBI is investigating the possibility that the ambush was designed to make Freeport increase its payments to the TNI. The Post will additionally report US officials also believe that “elements of the military may have wanted to frame the [OPM] in the hope of prompting the State Department to add the group to the department’s terrorist list. If the separatists were listed as a terrorist group, it would almost guarantee an increase in US counterterrorism aid to the Indonesian military.” [Washington Post, 6/22/2003] In 2006, the New York Times will report that, despite all the evidence, “Bush administration officials [have] consistently sought to absolve the Indonesian military of any link to the killings.” In November 2005, the US officially restores ties to the TNI despite the unresolved nature of the killings. The ties had been cut for 12 years due to widespread human rights abuses by the TNI. Also in 2006, Anthonius Wamang, the main suspect in the killings who was recently arrested, will confess that he did shoot at the teachers, but so did three men in Indonesian military uniforms. Furthermore, he says he was given his bullets by a senior Indonesian soldier. Wamang is said to belong to the OPM, but a human rights group connects him to the TNI. [New York Times, 1/14/2006] After the Bali bombings less than two months later (see October 12, 2002), the Asia Times will point to the Papua ambush to suggest that elements in the TNI could have had a role in the Bali bombings as well. [Asia Times, 11/7/2002]

About 2,000 state police attempt to evict the striking teachers from the Oaxacan city square “wielding clubs and firing tear gas.” They fail as the protestors quickly resume their positions but manage to injure at least 66 people. The teachers accuse the police forces of killing four; the Mexican national human rights commission will allege that they also “beat sleeping teachers with truncheons.” [Agence France-Presse, 6/14/2006; Los Angeles Times, 6/19/2006; GonzÃ¡lez and Baeza, 7/2007]

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